


5 Times Klaus Had Nightmares, and 1 Time His Family Helped

by literally_no_idea



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: American Sign Language, Bed-Wetting, Don’t copy to another site, Flashbacks, Hurt Klaus Hargreeves, Klaus Hargreeves Deserves Better, Klaus Hargreeves Has PTSD - Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, Klaus Hargreeves Needs A Hug, Klaus Hargreeves Needs Help, Klaus Hargreeves Whump, M/M, Nightmares, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-30
Updated: 2019-06-30
Packaged: 2020-05-30 23:43:42
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,936
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19413940
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/literally_no_idea/pseuds/literally_no_idea
Summary: Klaus had become used to waking up with his heart pounding, a scream on his lips and tears in his eyes long before the war. It started before the mausoleum, too.





	5 Times Klaus Had Nightmares, and 1 Time His Family Helped

**Author's Note:**

> Hi there! I like to introduce myself to fandoms by writing some painful shit, so here we are.
> 
> I'm planning on writing a service dog series and a few AU type ideas for this fandom soon, but I wanted to start here (even if I don't feel like this is my best writing).
> 
> Enjoy!

1.

Klaus is six the first time he wakes up in a panic. In his private training session that day, Reginald had told him to talk to the ghost screaming in the corner of the room. Klaus refused, begged to do something else, and Reginald had dragged him over to the corner by the collar of his shirt, forcing Klaus face to face with the ghost.

The ghost had reached out to grab him, her hand going through Klaus’s chest. It felt like being stabbed with an ice cold knife, pain and cold spreading through Klaus’s body like a virus. Klaus had sobbed, struggling desperately to get out of his father’s grip, but his father held him there, even as the ghost walked directly through Klaus, his entire body lighting up with pain.

“She’s gone,” Klaus eventually choked out between sobs, and his father huffed, let go of Klaus’s shirt and walked away as Klaus collapsed in a heap on the floor.

“You’ll continue training in the morning,” Reginald had said, and Klaus had just curled up on the floor crying until Grace came to get him, carrying him back to his room.

When Klaus falls asleep, he dreams of the ghost standing in front of him, pulling his heart directly from his chest and laughing as Klaus collapses, bleeding out on the floor.

Klaus wakes up crying, only to discover another ghost standing in the room. He shakes, cries for help, but even though he can hear his siblings talking down the hall, no one comes.

* * *

2.

Klaus is eight when Reginald discovers that Klaus can hear the ghosts even when he can’t hear anything else. No matter how loud Klaus plays music with his headphones or how loud the room around him is, Klaus can still hear the ghosts. It’s a little more muted, but still there.

So Reginald designs a set of noise cancelling headphones and locks them in place over Klaus’s ears so he can’t remove them.

It only takes a couple of minutes for Klaus to start screaming. It takes 45 minutes for Klaus to start clawing desperately at the headphones to remove them, curled in on himself as his fingernails start to bleed and the ghosts only scream louder and louder, Reginald watching Klaus with visible disappointment.

When Klaus is still screaming hoarsely after two hours, Reginald drags him by the arm to the room downstairs that used to be Vanya’s, locking him in as he screams and screams.

Klaus finally passes out from exhaustion six hours later, and he dreams of being chained to ghosts, blindfolded with his hands restrained and the headphones over his ears. He can’t tell if his family is there, or if he’s alone, and he doesn’t know how long he’ll be trapped here, maybe forever, until he dies and he’s stuck as a ghost for eternity too.

Klaus wakes up with his chest heaving, pants soaked from where he wet himself in his sleep. When Reginald opens the door, he wrinkles his nose, orders Klaus to throw away what he’s wearing and shower in the bathroom down the hall before he comes back upstairs.

* * *

3.

Klaus is ten when he begs Luther for help. All seven siblings are in the kitchen when Klaus approaches Luther.

  
“Please, you need to help me, you don’t understand, I can’t take it, please, Dad will listen to you,” he says, clutching Luther’s sleeve.

Luther rolls his eyes, shoves Klaus off. “He makes us all train hard, Klaus, you’re not special. You just need to do better, and Dad won’t be so hard on you,” he says, washing his dishes from dinner.

Klaus stumbles back, eyes wide. “No, no Luther you don’t understand, he’s, he’s worse when you aren’t around! Please, help me,” he pleads, turning to glance between his siblings for help.

“Look, Klaus, Luther’s right, you just need to try harder,” Allison says, and Klaus stares at her, open mouthed.

“No, I, please, he keeps locking me up and--”

“Klaus, seriously, shut up, I’m trying to focus here,” Five snaps, looking up from his book, and Klaus nods slowly, heading towards his room.

“Right. I, uh, I’m sorry.”

Klaus flees, curling up in bed. He dreams of his siblings laughing at him, yelling at him, of Luther dragging him to Reginald and helping Reginald lock the headphones over his ears. He dreams of walking through the house alone, of only seeing dead bodies, his siblings nowhere in sight, only the sound of their voices reminding him that this is his fault.

He wakes up shaking, tears streaming down his face silently, and he stays awake the rest of the night, more frightened by his nightmares than by the three ghosts standing around his bed.

* * *

4.

When Klaus is let out of the mausoleum, Reginald tells him he’s not allowed back home until morning, and Klaus nods, willing to agree to anything if Dad will just let him leave. He stumbles out onto the street, shivering and with no idea where to go. He heads towards downtown, in the hopes that he’ll be able to figure something out when he gets there.

In his exhaustion and with ghosts screaming at him from every direction, he runs into someone on the sidewalk, immediately stumbling back in fear.

“I-I’m sorry,” he stutters, and the man just chuckles, holds a hand out for Klaus to take.

“It’s okay, kid, it happens. What are you doing out this late, though? Don’t you need to get home?”

Klaus shakes his head. “I’m not supposed to go back until morning, so I’m just looking for somewhere to go.” He takes the man’s hand, standing up.

The man nods. “You must be really tired, huh? Do you want me to help you with that?”

Klaus frowns. “How?”

“Well, I happen to know a way to help you sleep.” The man pulls a small bag of pills out of his pocket, smiling. “It’ll cost you, though.”

Klaus pats his pockets, pulls out a few crumpled dollars. “I, uh, is this enough?”

The man shakes his head. “No, but I’ll just give it to you as a favor, and you can pay me back later. I’ll take a dollar as a down payment.”

Klaus hands him a dollar bill, takes the bag. “So, what do I do with them?”

“Just take one of them, it’ll help you sleep. Promise. Here, this is my card. Call me when you run out.” The man hands Klaus a business card with his name and phone number on it.

Klaus pockets the card. “Thank you.”

“Don’t mention it.”

The man walks away, so Klaus walks the other direction, turns down an alley and takes one of the pills, laying down on the cold concrete and letting the drugs pull him under.

He dreams of being left to sleep in graveyards, of being surrounded by ghosts who pull the pills directly from his stomach, growling at him and screaming that he needs to listen to them.

He wakes up screaming, with a woman hovering over him.

“Are you okay?” she asks, and Klaus nods, stumbles to his feet.

“Yeah, I’m just going home. Uh, thank you.”

Klaus goes home, and that night he takes two pills. The nightmares are still there, but not nearly as bad, and when he wakes up the next morning, he calls the number on the card the man gave him, asking for more.

* * *

5.

Klaus’s nightmares don’t stop during the war; if anything, they get worse, with the ghosts of his fallen comrades all around him. His nightmares get worse after Dave dies, and they follow him back home in the future.

After the fight in the veterans’ bar, Diego yells at him.

“Are you fucking serious? Klaus, you’ve done some reckless, stupid things, but going into a bar for war vets? Pretending you’re one of them? What the hell?”

Klaus shakes his head, keeps his gaze on his shaking hands, his bloody knuckles and the sound of gunfire echoing vaguely in his mind. “I’m not pretending,” he says, and Diego scoffs, stares out the window of the car.

“You need to fucking pull yourself together. We’re going home, you can sleep it off.”

Klaus goes to bed, if only to get Diego to leave him alone, and he drifts off into fitful sleep.

He dreams of Dave, of Dave’s lifeless body beside him, of trying to summon Dave and failing, of finally summoning Dave only for Dave to not recognize him, of summoning Dave and Dave yelling at him for not saving him, for not summoning him sooner.

Klaus wakes up sobbing, looks around only to realize it’s still daytime. He lays back in bed, closes his eyes and listens to the ghosts screaming at him. Maybe he deserves it.

* * *

+1.

They save Vanya, and travel back to the past. Ben’s alive again, and they have a second chance at saving the world. Which should be fine, but Klaus can’t sleep. They’ve been spending so much time trying to fix their little family that Klaus rarely gets a moment alone, and when he does, the drug withdrawals make it hard to sleep.

Which is probably why he falls asleep in the middle of a family meeting, slumping over and tipping out of his chair onto the floor. He dreams of the apocalypse, of surviving only to deal with the thousands of angry ghosts.

“You could have saved us!” one screams.

Another reaches into Klaus’s chest, drags Klaus forward by the ribs until they’re face to face. “This is your fault,” the ghost hisses. “Bring us back. You can make us manifest. It’s the least you can do.”

Klaus struggles in the ghost’s grip, hyperventilating, and he falls when the ghost moves back, just starting to get his breathing under control again when a ghost steps in front of him.

“Klaus.”

Klaus looks up, smiling. “Ben!”

“You’re a disappointment, once again,” Ben says, and Klaus’s stomach drops, cold dread filling his chest.

“No, I tried, I--”

“Stop lying! You didn’t do enough, and you know it!”

Klaus wakes up hyperventilating, sitting on the floor with his hands clawing at his chest and throat like he’s trying to rip himself out of his own skin.

“Klaus, deep breaths, come on, match me, okay?”

Klaus looks up, sees Vanya taking deep breaths, hands moving in front of her chest to mimic her breaths. Klaus glances around the room, at all of his siblings staring at him, and he starts to sob, tucking his legs against his chest and hiding his face behind his knees.

“Klaus, hey, it’s okay. Come on, bud, listen to Vanya,” Diego says, and Klaus peeks above his knees at Vanya, starts to shakily match her breathing until he’s breathing normally again, tears still streaming down his face.

“Feeling a little better?” Ben asks, and Klaus nods slowly, still watching everyone from behind his knees.

“We’ll talk about this later, but maybe we need to take a break. We can keep talking in the morning. You okay with that?” Five asks.

Klaus nods, and Luther holds out a hand, helping Klaus stand up.

Klaus goes to bed, and when he wakes up with nightmares, Allison is standing beside the bed, smiling at him.

“Can I stay?” She signs, and Klaus nods. She settles on the floor by the bed, holding out a hand for Klaus to take. He does, and when he wakes up in the morning, he finds Allison asleep on the floor, and he smiles. Maybe there’s hope for their little family after all.

**Author's Note:**

> Just want to note that Allison uses American Sign Language (ASL) because after the injury in season one, I figure that everyone would start to learn/use ASL with her so she can communicate better.
> 
> If you want to yell at me about this or anything else, you can find me on tumblr [ @tired-disabled-and-in-pain](https://tired-disabled-and-in-pain.tumblr.com/)
> 
> Thank you for reading!!


End file.
